Agri Plain Talk
By ZAC B. SARIAN
September 22, 2010, 6:52pm
Each show goer will have the chance to bring home a live goat or sheep for free. Ben Rara, president of the Goat and Sheep Producers Association of the Philippines, said that more than a dozen goats and sheep will be raffled off to lucky attendees.
He said that since the main focus of this year’s Agrilink will be small ruminants, the members of the association decided to hold an Animal Show where goats and sheep will compete in about 18 categories. The winner in each category will donate a live goat or sheep which will be raffled off to the attendees. The attendee will not pay any fee to participate in the raffle. He will just have to register at the booth of the association. By the way, Mrs. Soledad Agbayani has pledged to donate two sheep for the raffle even if her sheep will not win any prize.
In each breed, there will be categories like Best Boer Buck, Best Boer Doe, Best Boer Buckling, Best Boer Doeling, Best Anglo Nubian Buck, Best Dorper sheep, and so on.
Ben Rara said that there will be a booth inside the World Trade Center building where processed goat products will be available for tasting.
These include different kinds of cheese from goat’s milk, different styles of sausages, ice cream and yogurt. There will also be health and beauty products like soap with goat’s milk.
The Manila Bulletin will have its booth indoor where issues of Agriculture Magazine will be sold. The old issues dating from 1997 will be available for sale at only P100 per three copies. Of course, the current issues will also be available at the usual price.
Exotic fruit trees will also be available at the outdoor exhibits. There will be grafted Golden Queen mango, Peach mango, Eating Green, Chokanan and Many Babies mango from Thailand; sweet pummelos from Vietnam and Thailand and our own Magallanes pummelo. There will also be grafted seedlings of Longkong and duku lanzones, R5 and Super Red rambutan and others from the Teresa Orchard & Nursery.
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WINNING IDEA. Renting a neglected orchard can be a winning strategy, if you have the right know-how. Just like what our friend Severino Belviz has been doing. When we met him several years back, he was renting a 10-hectare farm owned by a doctor who did not have the time to properly manage the plantation of 1,500 ten-year-old pummelo trees. He struck a five-year lease with the orchard owner. In the first year, he paid him P80,000 and then promised to increase the rent by P10,000 each year. Both the owner and Belviz were happy. The owner no longer had to spend anything to maintain the farm and he was assured of an annual income.
Belviz was happy, too, because with proper care, the trees could be productive right from the first year. He spent around P30,000 per hectare to rehabilitate the trees that included fertilizing, pruning, spraying against pests and diseases, irrigation, etc. During the first year, he was already able to recover all the expenses and the rent.
In the second year, Belviz spent around P300 per tree. That’s really a small amount, according to him. He explained that each tree could produce 200 to 400 marketable fruits each year, each weighing 600 grams to 1.2 kilos each. That’s a minimum of 120 kilos per tree and could be much more. Belviz sold his fruits at P25 per kilo ex-farm. That 120 kilos would already be worth P3,000. So the gross income is 10 times the expenses in maintaining the trees.
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POULTRY SHOW. There will be a three-day poultry show starting tomorrow, Sept. 24, at the SM Megamall in Mandaluyong City. It will be participated in by various stakeholders in the poultry industry where new technologies, products and services will be showcased. Sandy Itchon, for one, will be selling dressed naturally-farmed chickens, pure chicken sausages, burgers and pate.
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WHITE CHICKENS FOR THE RANGE. Meanwhile, Dr. Rey Itchon discussed the possibility of raising the white broiler chicks as free-range chickens instead of the colored birds in our radio program. This is because there is an oversupply of white broiler chicks that some hatcheries are selling for as low as P6 to P10 per piece. The oversupply is expected to extend to next year because there is an excess of imported parent stocks that produce the day-old chicks.
According to Dr. Itchon, initial trials in raising the white broiler chicks as free-range chickens is very promising. They have to be raised to two months so that they become more muscled and therefore will have better flavor than their 33-days-old counterpart grown in broiler houses.
Published in Manila Bulletin Sept. 27, 2010.
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